The 12.2 Quart version of these containers are the perfect size for storing mass market paperback books. I've just gone to buy more of them, because the 35 or so of them that I already have are full, and I still have more of these paperbacks waiting to be stored. Since they hold about 20 to 25 books each (depending on the size of the books), that means I have more than 700 mass market paperback books already stored, and still more in shelves, waiting to make way for larger books. I only have so much shelf space, and these small paperbacks have the lowest priority for being out in the open. It's a good thing I believe there's no such thing as too many books, or I might be disturbed at these numbers.

I've just had a strange experience with being banned from commenting in someone's journal. I won't give the user name, but the person in question was one of the few conservatives on LJ who's ever read my journal. As I've said before, I think that maintaining an awareness of my conservative readers lends a civilizing influence to anything political that I write. Far too often, I've seen my fellow liberals simply demonize conservatives, and that's not the approach I want to take in dealing with them.

The user in question had switched her journal over to screening all comments (even from friends) in response to some provocation that I never really understood. At the time, I remember thinking that the move was a dramatic overreaction, and it's made me avoid introducing anything that might be controversial into comments in her journal. Some time ago, when I wasn't paying attention, she must have dropped me from her friends list and banned me from commenting. I discovered this, Today, while trying to respond to a question. There are times when I've been an aggressive critic of some activities in communities, but in general, I've tried to be fairly polite in other people's journals. Frankly, I'm surprise at having provoked this response from her.

In any case, it seems like it might be perceived as kind of creepy to continue reading the journal of someone who has banned me, so I have now dropped her journal from my friends list. Sometimes I just don't know what to make of people.

A CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) article lists a couple of reasons why Toyota is opening a plan in Canada instead of in some proposed locations in the United States. One, free health care in Canada, is not the subject of this post. But the other is.

One of the reasons Toyota opened a plant in Woodstock, Ontario is that residents there are better educated than their counterparts in Mississippi and Alabama, the states that tried to lure Toyota into the US. From the article:

Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.

He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

"The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario," Fedchun said.

It's been while since I've posted to this journal. I've actually sat down to create an entry several times, but the topic is a tough one. I've been trying to think of ways to explain to moderate conservatives why we liberals have a lot to fear from the efforts of the Christian Right to shape our world to their liking. I want such an entry to be rational, respectful of moderate conservatives, and convincing to moderate conservatives. But, my experiences, so far, discussing our current political climate with the conservatives whom I actually see during the day has been frustrating. I am met with double standards for judging politicians that are disturbingly extreme. There's a kind of stubborn group-think going on among some conservatives, and I find the result of the group-think I've encountered is that I'm at a loss for ways to make my case, even online.

This is not to say that all conservatives are guilty of group-think or that liberals are immune to group-think. In fact, I found myself a bit frustrated at some liberal group-think this weekend. But in my day to day life, I encounter moderate liberals, and I have chances to reason with them I have the experience of being able to talk them into avoiding some of the less rational position attributed to liberals. I have few such experiences trying to reason with conservatives. I'm sure part of the problem is that the conservatives I know are not moderate conservatives. But still, the point is that I have few positive experiences reasoning with with conservatives about politics, and when it comes to writing arguments, I draw heavily on my experiences with my target audiences.

I think that, ultimately, we liberals have to find ways to reach out to moderate conservatives; But, for the moment, I don't know how. In any case, this is what I've been stewing on. This is why I haven't posted much. My mind has some tendency to lock onto an issue, until I sort it out. This issue has been hard to get past.

I've just gone on a short, 10 mile bicycle ride through jogging/biking trails in Overland Park (a suburb of Kansas City). I know of at least two people who read my journal who routinely go on longer rides, and in fact, I've gone on longer rides not too terribly long ago. But early in 2004, I decided that I wasn't riding often enough, and I purchased what I've heard people call an elliptical trainer. The movement our feet make on those things isn't precisely elliptical, but I'll go with the flow and call it that. My elliptical trainer includes a heart rate monitor, and it helped me to discover something about myself that I hadn't been aware of, before. When I worked out on that device to about the same level of stress that I felt on the bike rides I had taken before, it told me that my heart rate was routinely rising to about 180 beats per minute, or so. That seems a little high to me, so I did some checking, and it turns out that, since I was 40 at the time, I ought to have been monitoring my heart rate during exercise and limiting it to around 140 beats per minute. After some thought, I realized that I had indeed been bicycling too infrequently, and my body had very cleverly adapted to infrequent exercise by developing the ability to sustain a heart rate of 180 beats per minute or more, for hours at a time, rather than developing the aerobic fitness that I was really trying to get from the bike rides.

Clearly getting the elliptical trainer was a good idea, and I set the bike aside for a while and worked on getting my heart rate down to a reasonable level, by exercising more frequently but for less time and with less effort. I'm finally to the point where I have to work to maintain 140 beats per minute or so rather than having to hold back. So I'm ready to start bicycling, again, but I don't yet have anything that will measure my heart rate while I ride. I went to "The Bike Source", yesterday, or rather to where The Bike Source used to be and found that it was closed. That was disappointing. But I had my handy Garmin iQue 3600 with me, along with some Map Source data loaded onto it, and I asked it to find stores with the words "bike" or "bicycle" the names, and let the iQue guide me to two of them. I couldn't find either of the additional two stores it claimed where there. Oh, well, I suppose Map Source data has the same chance of being out of date as the phone book. I was tired of looking for bike stuff after having just left work, and the other places it pointed me too were rather far away, so I have up.

I felt like I could have ridden 20 miles, but I really want to be careful not to fall into the same old habits again. I'll wait until I have some sort of heart rate monitor before I ride much more than 10 miles. Maybe I can still get out, this weekend, and get one.

The school board for the state in which I currently live (Kansas) will soon be holding hearings about the teaching of Evolution in public schools. Frankly, this surprises me. Some years ago, the Kansas State School Board voted to drop evolution from curriculum requirements, and in the next election, those school board members who voted for this measure where removed from the school board. And yet, here we are, again, with the school board apparently back in fundamentalist hands, holding more hearings on this subject. Some of you may not be familiar with the debates between legitimate scientists and fundie crackpots about evolution, and you may be tempted to believe that there is significant scientific controversy about whether or not there is any truth to evolutionary theory. In fact, it is one of the most successful theories in science. The reason it appears to the public that there is any controversy about the theory as a whole is quite simple: The fundamentalists are cheating.

I've gotten seven Nigerian style scam messages and one phony lottery winnings scam within the last 24 hours. Of course, I've forwarded each one to uce@ftc.gov, and perhaps they'll take care of them. The last 24 hours of spam from scammers is a bit unusual. I've gotten one occasionally, but I haven't gotten more than a few in a day for a long time.

Has anyone else been getting a lot of these financial scam emails over the last day or so?